Analysis by PMOI/ MEK
Iran, May 5, 2019 – Iranians are considered one of the most vibrant populations using the internet. More than half of the 80 million Iranians, especially the youth, use the internet to share news and information, debating in private, and conducting business.
The use of encrypted messaging applications, especially to share news and information that the regime goes the distance to hide from the public, has got the entire regime apparatus gravely concerned of growing dissent and the spread of unrest in the country.
This fear has been most visual during Friday prayer sermons. In one such event this Friday in the city of Shiraz, south-central Iran, Lotfollah Dejkam, the city’s Friday prayer imam criticized the broad use of the internet in Iran.
“On the internet, there is a conduct that must be observed carefully. It is not right to allow people to say and do whatever they want on the internet,” Dejkam said.
He called for the evermore involvement of the repressive regime’s organs to censor and filter the internet.
“It is an area which both FATA units (Iran’s internet police) and the judiciary can get involved in. There should undoubtedly be some kind of control by the authorities,” Dejkam said.
He criticized Google and others for closing down the accounts of the terrorist elements of this regime.
“They were talking so much about the internet being free! It is free! People can say whatever they want. But they block even one sentence from us, against the leader (referring to Ali Khamenei, the regime’s supreme leader whose Instagram account was temporarily closed) and others (referring to the heads of the terrorist Revolutionary Guards IRGC, whose Instagram accounts are blocked). Let them be heard. Those who close down these accounts are cowards,” Dejkam added.
He threatened these popular social media platforms, sayings mediums such as Instagram should know “they cannot achieve anything through silencing us.”
